Federal government gives Kensington project the green light

The Federal Highway Administration has given the green light for the Kensington Expressway reconstruction project to move forward, The Buffalo News has learned.

The agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation reached a “finding of no significant impact” after reviewing the environmental assessment conducted over the past two years by the State Department of Transportation.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, who announced a commitment of up to $1 billion in January 2022 for the project, is expected to make the announcement Friday in Buffalo.

“Governor Hochul has been supportive of this transformational, community-driven project to reconnect East Buffalo’s neighborhoods for more than two years, and we’ll have more to share on Friday,” spokesman Matt Janiszewski said Thursday afternoon.ย 

The decision allows the project to go to final design and then on to construction, which the governor has said she wants to see begin as early as later this year.

The Kensington project calls for a tunnel between Dodge and Sidney streets. Trees and grass would be planted above to reconstruct a portion of Humboldt Parkway designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and later bulldozed to make way for Route 33 during the highway boom of the 1950s and ’60s.

The decision marks the culmination of efforts made by residents on the East Side who formed Restore Our Community Coalition, also known as ROCC, to address the harm done by the expressway dating back to the early 2000s. The group has sought to reconnect neighborhoods long divided by the sunken six-lane highway.

Stephanie Barber Geter, who was ROCC’s chairman and face of the organization in recent years, died in January, weeks before the announcement.ย ย 

ROCC members hope there will be one or two future phases for the project, though the current project does not call for them.

Assembly Majority Leader Crystal Peoples-Stokes, D-Buffalo, pushed for the project and hasย worked with the governor to make it a reality.ย 

The…

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